Clocks go back: a good prompt to test your heating and alarms

When the clocks go back at the end of October, use it as a twice-yearly prompt, the way many people treat smoke alarms: test your carbon monoxide alarms, run the heating before you rely on it, and bleed the radiators so the first cold night isn't the first time you notice a problem.

A five-minute check

• Test every carbon monoxide alarm with its test button, and check the replace-by date on the casing.
• Turn the heating on and let it run. A boiler that's been off all summer is the one most likely to throw a fault, and now is a far better time to find out than in December.
• Bleed the radiators if the tops are cold while the bottoms are warm, so the system heats evenly.
• Check the boiler pressure and top it up if it has dropped below the normal range.

Why the clocks are a useful hook

The jobs above are easy and cheap; the problem is remembering to do them. Pinning them to a date that already exists, the clocks changing, means they actually happen, once a year, without a system or a reminder app. Landlords can use the same prompt to check that every property's alarms work and that nothing is due.